Thursday, May 31, 2007

Hillary Takes Money From Geezer-Bilker

"What could be more despicable," writes Froma Hallop in today's RCP, "than selling data about vulnerable old people to telemarketers already under scrutiny for defrauding them?"

She goes on about the company that did just that:

InfoUSA packaged the names under such labels as "Suffering Seniors," for elders with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. Another list, called "Oldies but Goodies," identified gamblers over the age of 55. "These people are gullible" is how it was advertised.

Crooked call centers from Canada to India bought these databases and proceeded to con lonely old Americans out of their life savings. It's against the law for list brokers to sell names to apparent criminal operations, but that did not deter infoUSA, according to the Iowa attorney general, who is investigating the company.

One victim was Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Iowa farmer. InfoUSA sold his name to a swindler who employed women to lure him into the spider's web by offering friendship over the phone.

"One gal in particular loved to hear stories about when I was younger," Guthrie later told a reporter. The sharks proceeded to drain at least $100,000 in savings, according to his family.

Cause to be upset, for sure. But why is Frommer, who worked for the Clinton administration and says of herself "people like me worked their darndest to drag Bill over the finish line of his last four years. We were not about to let the Republican leadership use a sex scandal as a pretense to overturn an election," bring this up now?

Because, she says, "that old sick feeling is coming back," the old sick feeling she had when Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the global con man. It's coming back because InfoUSA's prez, Vinod Guptar is a major, and welcome, Clinton contributor.

In 2002, he flew the Clintons to a vacation in Acapulco on the company jet. The Omaha-based enterprise subsequently paid Bill Clinton more than $2 million in consulting fees. Gupta gave $1 million to his foundation.

The concern goes beyond the Clintons' decision to consort with such questionable personalities. That they would do it so openly magnifies long-festering discomfort over their judgment.

If you're from Iowa, you know all this because the story of Richard Guthrie, the geezer with a heart for gold-diggers, has been publicized extensively.

Hallop, who likes Clintonian politics, asks Hillary to show a little class. But that's all it would be: a show. Hil and Bill have shown us time and again that they won't apply moral judgments to their political and financial methodologies.

That didn't hurt Bill because he slid into power as a relative unknown. Hillary, on the other hand, has had the opportunity to learn from past misdeeds and mistakes and better herself, but she has chosen not to. She remains corrupt to her core, unable to put good above Clinton.

She has no business -- other than the business of bettering the Clintons -- to be president.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.